EXPORTS

Starts a new pool. The file .hosts.erlang is read to
find host names where the pool nodes can be started. See
section Files below. The
start-up procedure fails if the file is not found.

The slave nodes are started with slave:start/2,3,
passing along Name and, if provided, Args.
Name is used as the first part of the node names,
Args is used to specify command line arguments. See
slave(3).

Access rights must be set so that all nodes in the pool have
the authority to access each other.

The function is synchronous and all the nodes, as well as
all the system servers, are running when it returns a value.